


Reconnect

by YvonneSilver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Music, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4092688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YvonneSilver/pseuds/YvonneSilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam tries to get used to living a life with Amelia, but finds it hard to settle into normal daily rhytms. To keep his mind occupied, he fixes old electronics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconnect

It’s a Thursday in the early autumn when Sam carries in a large black box and brings it straight through to his little workshop in the back of the house. Amelia looks up from the book she’s reading and questioningly raises an eyebrow as he walks by her again on his way out. Her unasked question is answered when he returns, a bunch of cables in one hand and a black and white electric guitar dangling from the other.

“What’s this?” She asks, following into the back room, where Sam gingerly leans the instrument against the wall.

“Hmm?” When he’s sure the guitar isn’t going to fall, he turns round to face her. “Hey there beautiful.” He twists an unruly lock of her hair around his finger to tuck it behind her ear, then runs his fingers through her hair. “It’s a Fender. The kid in 3B was throwing it out.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, leaning in to the touch of his large warm hands. “So why’s it in your workshop now? I thought we said no more trash in the house till you’d finished your current projects?”

Sam turns around and surveys his little room. She’s got a point. The rough wooden table is cluttered with appliances in various states of dismantling. There’s an old radio that is stuck on one wavelength, two broken blenders, a fan in two pieces, and a roomba with its electronics piling out. On the floor beneath the desk is a vacuum cleaner he promised a neighbour he’d take a look at.

He sighs, scratching absentmindedly at his wrist. “I know. But I can fix these. I know I can.”

Amelia looks up at him, seeing the forlorn look in his eyes she knows so well. He’s not only talking about electronics here. She wraps an arm around his waist. “Fine. Keep it. But I demand a serenade when you’ve fixed it.”

 

In the next couple of days, Sam slowly disassembles the guitar. He starts with the strings, carefully loosening the pegs and the bridge. He thinks of the first time he held a guitar, way back in the beginning of his Stanford years. That had been an acoustic guitar, a fellow freshman brought it and showed him a couple of grips. He picked up the fingersetting surprisingly quickly, and it was nice to have something normal to talk about. At subsequent house parties, he’d always look for the music first. It’s how he’d first met Brady, who’d invited him over to his house for lessons. That was where he’d played his first electric guitar. Among other things.

He wasn’t sure he would be able to fix the guitar he held now. If it was something in the pick-up, he really wouldn’t know how to fix it. Luckily, it turned out to be something in the output jack connecting the guitar to the amplifier. He added a soldering iron to the wall of equipment he had hanging over his worktable and the following weekend he has restored the connection.

As a finishing touch, he oils the neck of the guitar, polishing it until is shines once again with a warm, dark gleam, broken only by the silver fret markers. He stretches a set of new strings across the guitar body, threading them carefully between the bridge and the head.

When he’s finally satisfied with the result, he perches on the edge of his barstool and lays the guitar gently across his knee. He borrows Amelia’s tablet, downloading an app that will help him tune the instrument. He twangs each string in turn, listening carefully and watching the outcome on the screen as he twists the tuning keys. The familiar rising sound of a tightening guitar string brings back memories of long jam sessions with Brady, and he can’t help smiling. It’s been too long since he’s last played.

 

When Amelia comes home from her weekend shift at the vet, she’s greeted by the first notes of The House of the Rising Sun. Dropping her bag in the hall, she hurries to Sam’s workshop. From the doorway, she watches him play. He’s bent forward over the guitar, his long hair shielding his face as he plucks the strings. The fingers of his left hand move slowly, searching out the familiar grips. The tune progresses jerkily, his hand taking a second to find each new chord. With the nails of his right hand, he picks out the right string, spelling out the melody.

After the first four chords, he sighs and leans back, shaking his hair out of his eyes. Amelia smiles at him when he catches her standing there. “You’ve fixed it!” She exclaims happily.

Sam smiles sheepishly. “Yeah. It wasn’t that hard.”

Amelia shrugs off her coat and sits down cross-leggedly in front of him. “Play me something else.” She demands.

Sam laughs. “As my lady commands.” He leans over his instrument once more, tongue between his teeth as he carefully places the first three fingers of his left hand on the strings of the guitar. With a look of intense concentration on his face, Sam haltingly wrings the start of Stairway to Heaven from his instrument. Amelia laughs and claps when he straightens up again, shaking his left hand and flexing his fingers.

“It’s been too long since I’ve played.” He tells her, as he lays the guitar flat across his knees. “See?” He bends forwards and shows her his fingers, a dark red line across each of them from pressing the string into the board. Amelia takes his hand between her own two and carefully kisses each of his fingers in turn.

“Guess you’ll just have to wait for callouses to form again before you can play too much.” She smiles up at him.

And when he looks into her brown eyes, he knows exactly what she means. “Yeah. I guess I do.”


End file.
